Offa and the Mercian Wars

by Chris Peers

  Offa and Charlemagne

  It was probably his involvement in Kent which brought about Offa’s close relationship with the greatest figure in early medieval European history, the Frankish emperor Charlemagne. (He was not actually crowned emperor until the year 800, after Offa’s death, but the title seems appropriate in view of his pre-eminence among the kings of Western Europe.) Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, became king of the Franks in 768, and over the following decades expanded his territory from its heartland in France and western Germany by means of campaigns in Brittany, Saxony, Spain, Italy, Bavaria, Bohemia and as far east as the Balkans. By the end of the eighth century he had established the first European superpower since the fall of Rome, and become one of the few secular figures outside Britain of whom the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle takes notice. The Northumbrians had sent envoys to the Frankish court as early as 773, and the Franks already had especially close relations with Kent, to whose ruling dynasty they were related by marriage (J. Nelson, in Brown and Farr). Mercia seems to have been relatively slow to cultivate contacts overseas, as might be expected from its inland location, but Matthew of Westminster says that in the 770s Offa was endeavouring ‘to make a friend of Charlemagne’ as a counterbalance to the hostility which his expansionist policies had aroused among his English neighbours.

  Among Charlemagne’s leading counsellors in the next two decades was the renowned Northumbrian scholar Alcuin of York, who arrived at his court in 782. Soon after that we have records of an ongoing correspondence between Alcuin and Charlemagne, on the one hand, and Offa on the other. It does not appear to have begun auspiciously. In a letter dated sometime after 784, Pope Hadrian wrote to Charlemagne acknowledging a missive in which the latter had tipped him off about a rumour relating to Offa. Apparently the Mercian king had found it necessary to warn his Frankish counterpart about a story, which alleged that Offa had tried to persuade Charlemagne to depose the Pope and replace him with a Frankish bishop. The context for this bizarre plot was probably the ill feeling between Offa and Archbishop Jaenberht and the king’s attempts to obtain papal approval for his archbishopric at Lichfield. Hadrian clearly thought the rumour ‘incredible’ and accepted that unidentified enemies of Offa had spread it to discredit him, but it was not a promising start for Mercia’s debut in the world of European diplomacy. More encouraging was a letter of introduction from Alcuin for a teacher who had been sent to Mercia at the king’s request. After praising Offa for his interest in education, Alcuin goes on to flatter him in the most extravagant terms, which must presumably have been endorsed by his employer Charlemagne: ‘You are the glory of Britain, the trumpet of proclamation, the sword against foes, the shield against enemies.’

  Elsewhere Charlemagne addresses Offa as ‘dearest brother’ and ‘friend’, language which was fairly standard for correspondence between rulers at the time, but which has led some scholars (though only English ones, as Professor Nelson points out, in Brown and Farr) to argue that the Frankish king regarded Offa as his equal. In fact this is unlikely. In terms of size, military power and political prestige the Frankish Empire was of a different order of magnitude from Mercia even at its greatest extent. Charlemagne was well aware of this, and in his letters he always names himself first, and with numerous titles (‘King of the Franks and Lombards, Patrician of the Romans’), in contrast to his correspondent, who is merely ‘King of the Mercians’. There is a sense that Charlemagne is subtly trying to put Offa in his place, and what that place was is made clear by a diplomatic incident which occurred around 789.

  The Frankish king had written to Offa requesting one of his daughters as a bride for his son Charles, and had sent Abbot Gervold of Saint Wandrille, a friend of both men, to negotiate the match. The almost contemporary Deeds of the Abbots of Saint Wandrille relates how Offa replied that he would agree on condition that Charlemagne’s daughter Bertha was given to his own son in exchange. It seems from this that Offa was himself fooled by the language of diplomatic flattery and supposed that Charlemagne regarded him as a ruler of equal rank, but he soon realised his mistake. The Frankish king was angry at his presumption and ordered trade sanctions against England. This source claims that Gervold talked him out of it, but one of Alcuin’s letters refers to the temporary halting of trade across the English Channel, suggesting that the embargo was implemented, at least for a short time.

  The rest of Offa’s correspondence with Charlemagne deals mainly with routine matters such as the treatment of refugees from each other’s kingdoms, religion, trade and the suppression of a racket which involved merchants posing as pilgrims in order to avoid paying tolls. Some issues mentioned in passing shed useful light on Offa’s kingdom. Charlemagne sent him a gift of a belt and a ‘Hunnish’ sword, which may have been a weapon captured from the Avars, invaders from Central Asia like the earlier Huns, whom the Franks conquered in a series of campaigns between 789 and 796. This would have been a single-edged curved sabre of a type recently introduced into Europe by the Avars, and it would be interesting to know Offa’s opinion of this novel design.

  A complaint about the small size of English woollen cloaks is the first evidence for the export of wool, which was to become a mainstay of the later medieval economy and may have been so as early as the eighth century. Cloaks were a basic part of Frankish military costume, and it is surprising to find their ruler relying on Mercia to supply them. The emperor seems to have had something of an obsession about cloaks. Notker, in his Gesta Caroli, quotes his criticism of similar inadequate garments obtained from the Frisians (though they may have been the same ones, manufactured in England and imported by Frisian traders): ‘What is the use of these little bits of cloth? . . . When I am riding I cannot protect myself against the wind and rain. When I have to go and answer a call of nature, I suffer because my legs are frozen!’ Other goods were also traded in growing quantities during this period, and it is likely that the famous silver penny, the basis of English currency from Offa’s time until the thirteenth century, was introduced, or standardised, in order to be acceptable in trade with the Frankish Empire.

  The Coming of the Vikings

  Probably the best-known entry in the whole of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates how in the year 793, three years before Offa’s death, ‘terrible portents’ afflicted the land of Northumbria. First came great storms with flashes of lightning and ‘fiery dragons’, then a great famine, and finally, in June, the most ominous event of all: ‘the raiding of heathen men miserably devastated God’s church in Lindisfarne island by looting and slaughter.’ (The Chronicle actually ascribes this raid to January, but this is an unlikely time of year for long sea voyages and the alternative date of June, based on the ‘Annals of Lindisfarne’, is more generally accepted (Swanton (trans.), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1996).) Almost equally well known is the reaction of Alcuin of York, writing from the court of Charlemagne, to this news. ‘Never before in Britain’, he complained, ‘has such a terror appeared as this we have now suffered at the hands of the heathen. Nor was it thought possible that such an inroad from the sea could be made.’ This is usually regarded as the first appearance of the Vikings in England, a scourge which was to dominate the country’s history for the next three centuries. But if Alcuin, and the brutal and ineffectual King Aethelred of Northumbria, were taken by surprise by the raid, there is evidence that Offa was not.

  What the Chronicle calls ‘the first ships of the Danish men’ to appear in England had actually done so early in the reign of King Beorhtric of Wessex, who ruled from 786 to 802. The newcomers were in fact not Danes but Norwegians, from Hordaland in the region of Hardanger Fjord. They landed, according to the ‘Annals of St Neots’, on the island of Portland off the Dorset coast. Their presence was reported to the king’s reeve in the nearby town of Dorchester, a man named Beaduheard, who assumed that they were traders and rode to meet them accompanied only by a handful of men. Beaduheard tried to order the Vikings to accompany him back to Dorchester, and was promptly killed.

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bsp; Beorhtric was Offa’s son-in-law and at least nominally his vassal, and there can be no doubt that this incident was reported to the Mercian king, who quickly realised what it implied. It must have taken place before 796, because some time between 792 and the end of his reign Offa issued a grant at one of the synods held at Clofesho exempting the church in Kent from certain obligations. Not included in the exemption – and therefore presumably considered as the highest priority – were military service ‘against pagan seamen with migrant fleets’ and ‘the construction of bridges and fortifications against the pagans’. So within a very short time of the first Viking raids, and possibly even before the attack on Lindisfarne, Offa had not only grasped the nature of the new threat, but had begun to put in place, in one of the most vulnerable parts of his realm, effective measures to deal with it. Whether the purpose of the bridges was purely for communication and rapid deployment, or whether they were also intended to block the raiders’ passage up the rivers, we cannot be sure, but the use of fortifications foreshadows the development of defensive ‘burghs’ under Alfred the Great, and a well-planned system of walls and forts might have been effective if it had been completed in time. Offa in his prime could surely have carried out such a plan, but it was not to be.

  The great king died on 29 July 796. A battle at Rhuddlan mentioned by the Welsh Annals in the same or the following year is sometimes thought to be connected with his death, but Offa must by now have been at least 60 years old, and it is unlikely that he was still leading his armies from the front. The chronicle attributed to Matthew of Westminster gives a more plausible account. It tells how Offa had built ‘a most truly noble monastery’ at St Albans to commemorate the discovery of what were supposed to be the remains of the early Christian martyr Alban. Soon afterwards he passed away at a nearby settlement ‘which is called Offaeleia’. Apparently an attempt was made to bring his body back to the Mercian heartland, perhaps for burial at Repton, but according to the tradition preserved at St Albans it never arrived. The king was buried ‘with royal magnificence’ outside Bedford, where a chapel and a royal sepulchre were erected in his memory on the banks of the River Great Ouse. The course of this river shifts constantly, however, and by the time Matthew wrote in the fourteenth century the buildings had been swept away. It was said that it was still then possible when the water was low in summer to see the remains of the sepulchre lying on the bottom of the river, but the site has long since been lost. There are other candidates for the burial place, including Repton, Lichfield and Offlow in Staffordshire, and Offchurch near Leamington Spa, but no archaeological evidence for any of them.

  Offa had reigned for thirty-nine years, in itself a considerable achievement in that era. What is more, he had made careful arrangements for an orderly succession. Nine years earlier, at the great council held on the banks of the Thames at Chelsea, he had had his son Ecgfrith ‘consecrated’ as king by his puppet archbishop, Hygeberht. This represents an important step forward in the history of the English monarchy, as it is the first time that such a ceremony of consecration is known to have taken place. It was undoubtedly inspired by Frankish practice, and intended both to enhance the status of the kingship and to pre-empt any rival claims to the throne after Offa’s death.

  Nevertheless, this ambitious attempt to secure the future of the dynasty was destined to fail. Ecgfrith survived his father by only 141 days. The cause of his death on 17 December is not known, but there is no suggestion that he was overthrown by force. Alcuin attributed it to divine displeasure with the ruthless manner in which Offa had disposed of rivals to ensure his son’s succession. ‘This was not a strengthening of his kingdom,’ he insisted, ‘but its ruin.’ Alcuin, of course, was not to know that Mercia was very far from ruined, but was to maintain its position among the leading powers of the British Isles for another three-quarters of a century. In some respects, its finest hour was yet to come.

  Chapter 9

  Offa’s Successors and the Danish Invasions

  Ecgfrith was an energetic young man, ‘most noble’ in Alcuin’s estimation, and must have seemed a worthy successor to the great Offa. During his brief reign he issued charters granting land in at least three areas, including Wiltshire in the heart of Wessex. But almost immediately after his death, if not before, Mercia’s subject kingdoms began to break away. Once again the details of the royal succession are unclear, but two years later a certain Coenwulf, claimed to be a descendant of Penda’s brother Coenwalh and perhaps the best claimant left unscathed by Offa’s purges, was firmly on the throne. From references in his own charters Coenwulf seems to have had family connections with the abbey at Winchcombe, near Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, where his daughter was the abbess and the king himself was later buried. This was the heartland of the old Hwiccan kingdom, and it has been suggested that Coenwulf was descended from the Hwiccan royal family as well as the Mercian, or even that his alleged Mercian ancestry was invented to bolster his claim to the throne (Zaluckyi). The Hwicce never seem to be referred to as a separate political entity after Coenwulf’s accession, which strengthens the argument that with him the two royal lines were finally merged.

  Whatever his origin, the new king established his authority with a ruthless energy worthy of his predecessors. In 798 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records him campaigning in Kent, which had declared its independence under a former priest named Eadberht Praen, who had been living at Charlemagne’s court as a refugee from the wrath of Offa. Coenwulf’s first move was to persuade Pope Leo III to excommunicate Praen, so that he could not be accused of launching an attack on the church in the person of one of its ordained priests. Leading what Simeon of Durham calls ‘the whole force of his army’, Coenwulf then devastated Kent, especially the Romney Marsh area, captured Praen, and took him back to Mercia as a bound prisoner. Perhaps because he had once been a member of the clergy, the hapless rebel was not killed, but the Chronicle says that Coenwulf had him blinded and his hands cut off. William of Malmesbury records a story that the king later released Praen as an act of ‘clemency’ to mark the dedication of a church at Winchcombe, though the mutilated former rebel can hardly have been much of a threat, if indeed he ever had been.

  The campaign of 798 incidentally brought about the end of Offa’s short-lived archbishopric of Lichfield. When Praen began his rebellion Jaenberht’s successor as Archbishop of Canterbury, a Mercian appointee named Aethelheard, fled to Rome, provoking a sarcastic remark from Alcuin about the ‘good shepherd’ who was supposed to lay down his life for his flock. Coenwulf took the opportunity to write to the Pope suggesting that the English church be reorganised into two archbishoprics at London and York, as Pope Gregory had originally planned at the time of Augustine’s mission in 597. His motives no doubt had more to do with politics than religion, as the location of the head of the church at Canterbury had always been an obstacle to the suppression of Kentish independence, and London was far more securely under Mercian control. In exchange for this the king was prepared to abandon the archbishopric at Lichfield, which he now admitted had been a pet project of Offa’s and lacked support from the English bishops. Archbishop Hygeberht, seeing how the wind was blowing, seems to have resigned his see before he could be sacked, but in the event Pope Leo refused to agree to the transfer to London, and in 802 confirmed Aethelheard in his post at Canterbury, effectively abolishing the post at Lichfield. Coenwulf was by then firmly back in control of Kent, and perhaps for this reason did not pursue the matter. A key part of Offa’s plan to maintain Mercian supremacy had thus been abandoned.

  After the subjugation (‘almost utter destruction’, says Simeon of Durham) of Kent the victorious Mercian king appointed his brother Cuthred as his viceroy in the former kingdom. In 807, however, Cuthred died, and Coenwulf reimposed direct rule. Clearly a swift and decisive resolution of affairs in the south-east had been necessary, because trouble had also arisen on the western frontier. Apparently in the same year as the Kentish campaign, the Welsh Annals record that King Caradog
of Gwynedd was killed ‘by the Saxons’. As this source is prone to describe all English as ‘Saxons’, this is usually interpreted as another reprisal by Coenwulf against a bid for independence. We have no written sources for events in East Anglia, but for a brief period around 798 coins were struck there bearing the name of an otherwise unknown king named Eadwald. This may represent yet another doomed rebellion, rapidly suppressed in another whirlwind campaign in the hectic year or two following Coenwulf’s accession (G. Williams, in Brown and Farr). In these three campaigns, in what may have been a single season, the Mercian army can hardly have travelled less than 500 miles.

  Further trouble was to follow from another old enemy, Northumbria. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does not mention this war, but according to Simeon of Durham the unpopular Northumbrian king Aethelred had been assassinated in 796, to be succeeded by Osbald, who reigned for twenty-seven troubled days before abandoning his throne to a nobleman named Eardwulf. The latter was later to be canonised as Saint Eardwulf, but his holiness was not immediately apparent. While engaged in a purge of his rivals he discovered an alleged Mercian plot to depose him, and in 801 led an army against Coenwulf. The Mercian king mustered a large army which Simeon says included ‘many forces from other provinces’, though it is not clear whether this refers to traditional Mercian subjects such as the Hwicce or client kingdoms like Wessex and East Anglia. It is possible that Coenwulf was unsure of the loyalty of some of these contingents, because this campaign saw none of the ruthless action with which he was normally associated. Simeon describes a ‘long campaign’, terminated not by a decisive battle but by a negotiated peace, made at the urging of nobles and bishops from both sides.